The Orphan

The world had become a very different place by the time Miyuki Kazuya returned to it.

Years ago, when they'd ripped the burlap bag from his head and shoved him down onto the grimy floor of a cell, he had thought he would never again see the light of day. But somehow, bleary-eyed and with a face itching with stubble, Kazuya now sat in the seat of a train headed to the outskirts of some displaced prefecture.

The train clattered around him. Civilians chattered to each other in the seats in front and behind him. They were speaking of everyday things—things he hadn't thought about or considered in a very long time.

"Have you seen the results of the game between the Giants and the Dragons yet?"

"No! I haven't managed to get my hands on the morning paper yet. Have you?"

"Would you look at what Murata-san is wearing today?"

"I was at Sato's house last night."

"You watched the broadcast then?"

"Kiyo-chan wasn't feeling well, so we had to leave her with my parents…"

"We were all crowded into his living room to watch it. It was an amazing game."

"Takashi-kun! Come back here!"

Something tugged on Kazuya's sleeve. Looking down, he met the widened eyes of a round-faced boy dressed neatly in a jumpsuit.

"Mister, what happened to your hand?" asked the boy, pointing with a chubby finger.

Kazuya pulled his sleeve back, revealing his blackened, ruined hand. "Well, I was a naughty child, you see. The ogres got to me."

The boy's mouth dropped open in awe. "Wow!"

Just then, squeezing past a group of suited men, the boy's mother burst into the aisle. "Takashi-kun, what are you doing?! I told you not to talk to strangers!"

"Yes mama," said the boy, pouting. Taking his mother's waiting hand, he let himself be led away.

After a moment, Kazuya lowered his hand. Tucking it into the folds of his jacket, he leaned back against his seat and looked out the window. The scenery passed by quickly. The green stalks of rice fields waved, with flashes of water here and there. He could make out small figures in the distance. Their bamboo hats shone white in the sunlight.

He and the other prisoners of war who'd been repatriated from China had been met with a small, cheering crowd of people at the harbor. They'd waved flags as they each stumbled off the ship plank. Kazuya could clearly remember the moment. The sun rays, dazzling to his gaunt eyes. The smiling faces with features like his own. The familiar sight of the snow white flag with the red sun.

There'd been no one waiting for Kazuya. At the town hall, he found a message his uncle had left for him.

His parents had perished in Tokyo during an air raid. Their estate had burned down with them. His older brother had been killed in action over ten years ago. Thinking that Kazuya too was dead, his uncle had taken over the helm of the family.

Now that he was back, the family didn't know what to do with him. In the end, under the pretense of rehabilitation, Kazuya found himself being shuttled off to a countryside summer house.

He may have once protested against it. Back in the days when he'd been Captain Miyuki, esteemed officer of the Imperial Japanese Army. Back when he'd had a brother. But the army was dismantled, the war lost. His brother's ashes had long since been scattered to the wind.

Sometimes, he wondered why he was still alive.

Out in the rather vaguely-termed countryside, his days passed as idly as one might expect from the second son of a wealthy Tokyo family.

His abode was a small, traditional-style building with tatami flooring and sliding doors. A home that he'd only spent time in once as a young boy, it was grounded and soberly furnished. The most lavish decoration was an ornamental sword—a purported heirloom—hanging above the mantle in the entryway.

There was also a study room with a window that looked outside, and a scroll hanging in the alcove. Kazuya spent the first few weeks in there, pretending to preoccupy himself by reading through papers his uncle had sent him. Hundreds of financial and legal documents, listing so many things and yet at the same time, nothing at all. Using his left hand, he scrawled his signature across these papers in child-like handwriting.

One morning, he found himself staring down at a paragraph halfway through a thick bundle of papers with zero recollection of what he'd just read through. After a beat, he threw down his felt-tipped pen. He pushed the tower of papers off his desk, and watched with empty satisfaction as the white papers scattered in the air, tumbling down to the floor.

His uncle had yet to send any further notice since. Kazuya didn't expect to hear anything from the city for a very long time.

The window of his study looked out over a small vegetable garden.

When Kazuya had first arrived, there'd been only rows of raked dirt. Now however, tufts of leafy greens dotted the earth. When he'd asked, the housekeeper—a middle-aged woman who was rarely seen without a gardening tool at hand—told him that she'd planted cucumber, squash, eggplant, and a few vines of tomato entwined around a wire cage in the sun-lit corner.

Sometimes, he saw the figure of a young boy working in the garden beside her. He wore a little straw hat, and judging from his size, he couldn't have been more than eight, nine years old. When Kazuya first saw the child, he wondered whether it was the housekeeper's son. The next time he ventured outside, he asked her in a passing sort of way.

"Do you have a son, Takigawa-san?"

The trowel in her hand paused. "No, I don't."

But Kazuya had already lost interest before he'd even heard her answer. Without pressing the subject, he wandered away and then spent the rest of the day sleeping atop the sloping hill. There was an old willow tree there that blocked most of the sunlight.

Sometimes, when he'd been lying there long enough, he thought he could make out something like mist drifting off the trunk of the tree. Something faint whispered in his ear.

Aside from the housekeeper and the boy who wasn't her son, there was only a maid who came to clean the villa once every week. When evening fell, Kazuya was the only person around for as far as the eye could see.

When he was awake, his head was filled with hundreds of voices. Brusque men shouting at him in languages he didn't understand. Terrified women pleading toward him in languages he didn't understand. Crying and screaming, though, were universal.

But when Kazuya was asleep, there was nothing. No voices. No throbbing ache where his hand was once whole. There was nothing but silence, as absolute as the orders of a superior officer and as still as the dirt pile by a a freshly-dug hole.

Kazuya first met the boy on a particularly heated day. It was the kind when the passing breeze was thick and suffocating. His feet, partially out in the sun, were prickling. He opened his eyes and as his vision adjusted to the sudden light, he could make out a small dark figure sitting by the tree roots.

By simple process of elimination, Kazuya knew it was the boy who sometimes worked in the garden, though he wasn't wearing his straw hat. As his eyes refocused, he saw that the boy was looking at something on the tree's trunk through what looked to be a magnifying glass.

"Hello there," Kazuya called out.

At the sound of his voice, the boy momentarily looked up with a blank expression, and Kazuya saw his face for the first time.

Immediately, Kazuya knew—the boy wasn't Japanese. Or at least, not fully. His nose was just a bit too tall, his face just a bit too defined. His hair was a shade of lighter brown. But it was his eyes that really gave him away. They were yellow. Or were they amber? It was hard to say. Whatever the color however, it was foreign.

Without responding, the boy turned back to his magnifying glass. Somewhat bemused, Kazuya picked himself up. Brushing off stray blades of grass and dirt from his kimono, he approached the boy.

"What's your name?" he asked. There was no response. "Do you speak Japanese?" Now that he was closer, Kazuya could see what the boy was doing: If the shriveled black ant bodies were any indication, it looked as though he was burning ants on the tree trunk. "I've seen you working in the garden with Takigawa-san."

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," the boy answered in perfect Japanese. "Auntie said so."

He smiled. "Is your aunt Takigawa-san?" The boy shrugged, focusing his attention on another hapless ant that tried to scuttle away. "Well, your aunt works for me. And I say you can talk to me." That gave the boy some pause. Kazuya watched as the ant, taking advantage of its lucky break, disappeared into a knot in the tree. The boy turned. There was a purpling bruise on his brow, Kazuya suddenly noticed.

His eyes shining strangely in the sunlight, the boy said, "I'm Eijun."

Wind, blowing through the hanging branches. Sunlight, filtering down through the leaves over them. A whisper in his ear. His throbbing hand, tucked uselessly away in the folds of his sleeve. Kazuya couldn't move.

As he would soon find out from the reluctant housekeeper, the boy was what they called a half. He was the product of an ill-fated encounter between one of the American soldiers occupying Japan, and a young Japanese girl. She'd been swept off her feet by promises murmured in a language she didn't understand. Inevitably perhaps, the soldier returned to his own country shortly after she gave birth. A few years later, the woman's sister—the housekeeper—found the boy abandoned at her doorstep. The mother hadn't shown her face since.

"He's a problematic boy," the housekeeper said shortly, wiping her brow with a towel. "Always getting in trouble at school."

"There's a school around here?" he asked.

"Just a small one, a few miles out," she said, gesturing vaguely to the horizon. "Not many families with children around here." She peered suspiciously at him, her eyes straying to his blackened hand. "Is there any reason why you're asking me these questions?"

Kazuya reassured her that no, he wasn't a xenophobe nor a pedophile. He was just a harmless—albeit bored—man enjoying his leisurely days of early retirement.

"Auntie said you're a war crim…crimnal," said Eijun matter-of-factly the next time they met. They were sitting under the willow tree. Thankfully, the boy hadn't brought his magnifying glass this time.

"…did she now?" said Kazuya. Without responding, Eijun eyed him in a way reminiscent of the housekeeper. Sighing, Kazuya handed the boy another piece of candy from his pocket.

Unwrapping the candy with some relish, Eijun nodded. "But uncle got mad at her for saying that. He said that Japan shoulda won the war. And that the, the soldiers are all heroes." He popped the candy in his mouth, and Kazuya noticed a gap in his teeth that hadn't been there before.

"…Haha! I see." He gave the boy a small smile. "Well, what about you, Eijun? What do you think of me?"

One cheek bulging with candy, Eijun kicked carelessly at the dirt. "I dunno." Twisting around, he tugged at Kazuya's sleeve. "Hey, what happened to your hand, mister?"

Pulling back his sleeve, Kazuya paused. He'd always planned on using his ogre story when asked, as more likely than not, children would be the only ones honest enough to ask. For some reason however, he couldn't bring himself to tell it this time. "Well…you see, this is what happens to bad people when they get caught."

But Eijun only shrugged. "Oh, okay." Then, presumably catching sight of something more interesting, he got to his feet and trotted away. He left behind just two sticky wrappers.

He didn't dream.

But when he drifted off to sleep under the willow tree, sometimes he caught snatches of something that lay in between reality and unreality. It whispered in his ears. It hovered around him like an apparition.

It was the middle of summer, but in his eyes, he could see a field of snow. Everywhere, it was white—except for a pool of red right at his feet.

His sword was drawn. Dark blood dripped off its end. There was a body, still and silenced. And just beyond that, another body—but this one was trembling. His shoulders were heaving. The boy was alive.

Why did that bring such immense relief?

"Can you get up on your own?" he asked.

His eyes slowly opened. And like mist dissipating into air, the snow disappeared. It was summer again. He was alone again. At his side, his hand dully throbbed.

Waving goodbye to the farmer who'd hitched him a ride to the nearest town, Kazuya was heading back to the house when he saw Eijun walking ahead on the dirt road. In a disheveled school uniform, his head was bowed. He moved with a slow, careful gait.

Making sure that his bag of new books was secured to his side, Kazuya picked up his pace. The boy lifted his head at the sound of approaching footsteps, but when he saw Kazuya, it slinked back down.

"Hello Eijun," said Kazuya cheerily. "Heading back home from school?" Eijun jerked his head. "What'd you learn today?" He shrugged. "Hm. Well, do you like school?"

"No," the boy answered shortly.

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Because, because."

Kazuya decided it was time to change the subject. He patted his bulging bag. "Do you like to read?"

"No."

And so on and so forth.

One evening, there was a summer festival in the next town over. Kazuya followed the housekeeper and her husband to the venue.

Paper lanterns hung from lines strung all around the town center. Conversations buzzed everywhere as children darted around and under yukata robes. Sizzling and smoke wafted from stalls. The smell of okonomiyaki and takoyaki filled the air. It was almost unbearably hot, a mix of body heat and summer haze. The ground and air vibrated with the rumbling sound of taiko drums.

Kazuya could remember a festival just like this one, long ago. Back when he'd visited this area with his family as a child, they'd also visited a festival. Perhaps it had been this very same one.

The housekeeper having excused herself to look for her nephew, Kazuya found himself walking past the stalls alone.

"Where'd you get that from?"

"C'mon, keep up!"

"Wait for me!"

"I'll give you two of these for that…"

His feet stopped in front of the goldfish scooping stall. There were already several children squatted in front of the tank, fervently following the darting fish with their paddles.

"Sacchan, how many do you have?"

"None, yet. Why?"

"I've got three. Here, you can have one."

Kazuya could remember squatting in front of the tank as a boy, eyes focused as he tried to outmaneuver the elusive fish. He'd tried to catch more than his brother. Back in the day, that'd been his primary preoccupation: beating his older brother.

Of course however, his brother had caught a number more than Kazuya. He thought he could recall spending the rest of the evening sulking over that.

All of a sudden, a stinging pain seared through his right hand. Taken off-guard, Kazuya stumbled. He managed to catch himself in time. But as he straightened up, he caught sight of a passing woman. Giving him an odd look, she ushered her son closer to her body. Automatically, Kazuya drew his hand further back into his sleeve. He turned his back on the stall, and began to walk in the other direction.

The festival lights faded at his back and his surroundings grew dark. But he didn't stop. At least, not until the heat had given way to a cool summer wind that nipped at his bare arms. When he finally turned around, he'd gone far enough that the darkness was like a tunnel. At the other end was a cluster of orange festival lights, bobbing in a way that made them look ghostly. Like they were floating in midair.

"What're you staring at me for?" Eijun mumbled. He looked embarrassed to be the subject of attention. Unsettled, even. His small body was tense and poised, as though prepared to take flight at the slightest warning sign.

They were weeding the garden again. Going against the housekeeper's protests, it had initially been a somewhat interesting and even satisfying hobby for Kazuya. It'd been a sort of a challenge to himself, trying to do it one-handed. It was easier than it'd seemed however—the trick was to pull out the shallow-rooted ones before they seeded. Once he'd realized that, the task had been consigned to the chore that it was.

He wondered, just how did they keep growing back? Even when it seemed they'd pulled out every single weed possible, in a few days, there would surely be several more peeking out of the earth. Obako, quickweed, daisies, and others he didn't recognize. But still, it gave him something to do. And it passed the hours.

"You remind me a little of someone I once knew long ago," Kazuya finally replied.

"Me?" Eijun frowned. He wiped at his face with his shoulder, leaving behind a smudge of dirt. "Were they also a half?"

"No, he was…" Kazuya stopped. He thought about it. In the ensuing silence, Eijun looked toward him curiously. Under the sunlight, his strange golden eyes seemed to glow. Finally, he answered, "Well, maybe he was, in a way."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the boy mumbled, looking away.

"Never mind," he said with a smile. "Anyways, Eijun, what do you like to do?"

"…not weed gardens."

"Haha! Me neither. Hm. Do you play any sports?"

"No."

"Do you like any sports? Baseball?"

"Baseball is boring."

Kazuya blinked—and then he let out a sigh. "Is that so?"

"Why? Do you like baseball?" asked Eijun, hacking at a root with a trowel.

"Yes," he answered. Feeling tired, he left it at that. They conducted the rest of their weeding session in silence.

Rainy season had begun. The air was tepid, the atmosphere brimming with grey clouds. Warm raindrops, pitter pattering on the roof. Kazuya didn't leave the house when it was raining.

They said ghosts dwelled within willow trees.

What did they do, he wondered, when there was nobody living around them to haunt? Did they disappear?

"You there," he called out, pointing at the boy holding the baseball. "What's your name?"

The boy blanched, as they all did when he pointed at them. But he didn't withdraw into himself like most of them did. A beat passed, and then his face smoothening over, he rallied himself together. The boy was a brave one. He could tell.

"…, sir," the boy replied.

What was the boy's name? He couldn't recall. Even though it'd been only a little different from the name he knew him by. But it seemed that little difference was enough to make it unintelligible.

"Have you ever played baseball?"

He opened his eyes. The ceiling, at first blurry, came into focus. The roof must have leaked, for something warm and wet was dripping down his face. As always, his hand ached.

News for Kazuya came from the city sooner than he'd expected. And what he received was different from anything he'd been expecting.

His uncle was dead. He'd been taken by radiation sickness. It had struck and carried the man away before anyone had even thought to notify Kazuya.

As he prepared his funeral clothes in his study, he felt a faint nearby presence. Kazuya turned around to see, indeed, a pair of tawny eyes observing him from the window.

"Where're you going?" asked Eijun in a suspicious tone.

"The city," said Kazuya, turning back to his opened drawers.

There was a pause. "You're leaving?"

"Hm? What's that?" he said, smiling. "Think you'll miss me?"

"Ha!"

Kazuya blinked, and looked back to see the boy scowling heavily. He'd recently added a jagged cut by his mouth to his collection of injuries, which added to the effect. "…is that a no?"

His mouth still sticky with candy, Eijun stuck his tongue out. "Leave and don't come back for all I care!" Without waiting for a response, he scurried away.

The way the smoke of the incense filled his nose and ears raised unpleasant memories for Kazuya. The first chance he got, he stepped out onto the veranda. He breathed in the fresh air so deeply, his lungs rattled.

"Mister, what happened to your hand?"

Kazuya looked down to see a tiny girl with freckles. Perhaps one of his cousin's daughters? He pulled his sleeve back, revealing his blackened, ruined hand. "Well, I was too much of a naughty child. The ogres got to me."

The girl let out a little gasp. Her mouth forming a perfect circle, she got up and ran away to one of the women dressed in black. Hiding behind her mother's kimono, she peeked at Kazuya. One of the men who'd been talking with the woman noticed, and looked in Kazuya's direction. His eyes widened in recognition. Kazuya let out an internal sigh, waiting for the inevitable.

Excusing himself, the man began to walk over.

For some time after he'd returned to the countryside, Kazuya didn't see Eijun.

At first, he thought nothing of it. He simply kept an eye out for the straw hat in the garden. But after a few days, finding himself counting the number of threads in the tatami floor, Kazuya finally gave in.

"The boy?" The housekeeper eyed Kazuya suspiciously. "He's always doing whatever he wants. He'll show up when he feels like it."

And indeed, several days after that, he woke up from his customary afternoon nap under the willow tree to see Eijun standing over him. He was holding a magnifying glass and burning ants again. This time however, on Kazuya's leg, which would explain the prickliness.

"Did you know ants have two stomachs?" Kazuya said. He'd recently read about it in one of the books he'd picked up in town.

"Huh?"

"They've got one stomach to hold food for themselves, and then another for other ants."

There was a short pause as Eijun, with his brow furrowed, visually processed this information. "But…why?"

"Why what?"

"Why…why would they need another for other ants? Can't the other ants feed themselves?"

"It's because some ants need to look after their nest while other ants look for food."

Eijun fell silent. He looked down at the magnifying glass in his hand. For a second, Kazuya wondered… but then without further response, the boy bent over the glass and began to focus sunlight over another ant. This time, on his ankle.

Kazuya let his head fall back on the grass.

How ironic, he thought. How sickening. That he of all people could feel this sorry for an ant.

On one particularly slow afternoon, Kazuya was about a quarter of the way into Birds of the Old World and was musing about the impracticalities of importing flamingos—when he heard a clattering sound. And then, high-pitched, unbridled shouting.

Anger was an ugly sound. He hadn't heard it rear its ugly head in some time. It was a jarring realization. A break in the blanket of stagnant serenity he'd managed to wrap himself in.

At first stunned, as the shouts continued, he was pushed into action. Dropping his book, he hurried to his window. As he'd been able to surmise, the one who was screaming was the housekeeper. And standing several feet away from her, trembling, was the target of her fury. A small trembling figure…

In an instant, everything turned white for Kazuya. At first, it all the blood and heat in his body seemed to rush to his head. To the point where he wondered whether he wouldn't internally combust. Whether his body wouldn't burn white and crumble into dust and smoke.

But then as quickly as he'd burned hot, everything turned cold. It felt like something had sucked out all the heat of his body. His surroundings were in icy clarity. All of a sudden, he could make out details in the room around him that he'd never noticed before, from the faint scrawling in the corner (a child's handwriting?) to the slightly uneven touch-up of the wooden window frame (had there been a nick there?).

His heart had slowed down. It was so slow, he wondered in a detached sort of way whether he hadn't died. Was he a ghost now?

Silently leaving his room, Kazuya reached the main entryway. As he slipped his feet into his sandals, he could still hear her screaming. Without the slightest hesitation, he lifted the ornamental blade above the mantel from its hooks. He slid the door open. It had just started to rain again, but he paid it no mind.

Droplets of rain hit his stiff face. The woman's back was to Kazuya. He was walking so quietly, she couldn't have hoped to hear him. As he drew closer to the two figures, everything was so clear, so clear, he couldn't make sense of her words. The only thing he knew was that the boy was trembling. And that he would do anything to stop those tremors.

It was only as Kazuya lifted the blade in his hand that he caught sight of Eijun's expression. The boy's face—bruised and bleeding from his mouth and nose—was taut with fear. And yet, for some reason, it wasn't fear for himself. His eyes flickered to the screaming woman, and then to the blade. His eyes were pleading. Kazuya knew that look well.

It had never stopped him before, but just this once, it gave him pause. And finally, in that still moment as the soft sound of rain hitting the earth filled his ears, the housekeeper's words registered in his mind.

"What is this, Ei-chan?! Who did this?!" the woman cried.

Eijun didn't respond. His amber eyes, unblinking, bore into Kazuya's. The rain, dyed red by his blood, streamed down his face.

"Why don't you ever tell me?!" she said, keening. Her shoulders were shaking. "If you'd just tell me who did this, I'd find them! If only you'd tell me!"

His hold on the hilt slackening, Kazuya lowered the sword. Seeing that, Eijun's frame sagged in relief. His expression crumbled.

"How could I?" the boy answered, his voice quivering. "How could I?"

"You just need to tell me," said the woman. She was pleading too, now. "Then I can help you."

Thick tears began to well up in Eijun's eyes. "Then…then you'd get tired of me too. You'd leave me too."

Something was burning. Something was searing. His surroundings were spinning.

Kazuya looked down—and realized that he was gripping the hilt with his right hand. The hand that had been blackened and ruined in a prison camp thousands of miles away in foreign country. The hand that he'd thought had died on the day he'd stabbed a young girl. The day his brother had looked at him as though he were a stranger.

Forcing open his hand, he released the sword. It clattered to the ground.

Kazuya nodded carelessly. "Very good. Now here's the real question. What is your opinion on this man?"

A long pause. The boy looked down at his feet. Kazuya had noticed that he'd never really met his eyes, not even when looking for a sign from the mound.

Why did he care what this boy thought? This foreign boy who'd grown up in the boonies. This insignificant nobody who knew nothing.

And yet, how had they come to this moment?

Said boy suddenly looked up. And for the first time, he looked straight at Kazuya. "I think he must still be playing baseball in whatever backwater place he ended up in."

He gaped at that. And then he laughed. Oh, he laughed.

When he could finally speak again, he smiled at the boy. "We'll play baseball together again, one day."

Regaining consciousness, Kazuya found himself lying on his futon. There was something light weighing down on his arm. He turned to see a small figure with tufts of brown hair dozing beside him. His hand throbbed, as it always would.

Something wet was trickling down his face. And he couldn't even blame the roof this time. Just the week before, he'd had a worker come in to fix the leaks.

"You're really going to leave this time, aren't you?" Eijun said, biting his lip.

Kazuya reached out with a hand to ruffle the boy's hair. "I have to take care of some family affairs."

For the first time in a long while, he was wearing a suit again. He'd always worn a kimono around the house. The grey business suit he now wore felt constricting in comparison. Still, formality was formality. And perhaps constraints, as binding as they were, weren't always a bad thing.

"Then...will you come back after that?"

"Of course," he said. Of course.

"Okay. I'll play some baseball with you when you do," Eijun mumbled, his cheeks glowing pink. "Even though it's boring."

Kazuya smiled. "Then I'd better return."

He looked down at his watch. There was still some time before the car to take him to the train station would get here.

Kazuya picked his way through the grass to the top of the hill, where the willow tree was waiting. Setting his briefcase down on the ground, he sat down.

From here too, he could see the vegetable garden. Takigawa-san had done her job well. The garden, small as it was, was overflowing with greens and dotted with color. In the corner, fat red tomatoes were bulging off of vines that snaked up the wire mesh.

The sound of laughter caught his attention. Kazuya turned to see Eijun huddled by the willow tree. Takigawa-san had taken Eijun out of the school for now. It was only a temporary solution. But the boy's bruises were finally starting to fade.

At the moment, he was breaking up a cucumber and dropping the bits on the ground by the tree roots. After a few seconds, Kazuya saw the source of his mirth: ants were crawling around the bits, and carrying them up the trunk of the tree.

("Did you know ants can carry up to fifty times their body weight?" said the boy excitedly.)

There was something on the trunk, Kazuya realized. A faint smear of something white. Had paint somehow gotten on there before? He couldn't tell. But maybe it'd been the source of the mist he thought he'd seen around it. An afterimage created by some strange inflection of the light, perhaps.

As he looked at it, a memory of a baseball field he'd once played on drifted into his mind. It'd been far away, in a foreign land. From what he could recall, it'd been a crudely-made field, with bases painted in white at each corner. He'd played as a catcher there, for a boy who'd looked at him in a way no one else ever had. Was it still there, he wondered?

Probably not. By this point, it was most likely nothing but a lot full of weeds. He could see it in his mind. Daisies, scattered here and there, their white faces swaying in the far-off breeze. Unwanted, perhaps, to some. Yet even weeds had their places. And no doubt, they'd be sprouting there long after he'd disappeared from the face of the earth.

Lying back on the grass—not caring at the moment whether it'd ruin his suit—Kazuya closed his eyes.

The sunlight, filtering through the branches in patches, was warm on his skin. The wind pushed at his face and hair. The smell of grass was thick. He could feel his heart beating steadily in his chest. He could hear laughter again.

The world had become a very different place. But it was still the same as ever.

As he lay there, somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear the clanging of metal bats. Baseballs colliding into his mitt. The crunching of running footsteps on dirt. Laughter and squabbling. His brother's voice, gently teasing, the way it once had long ago.

And even further away—but at the same time, reverberating within his chest—a quiet whisper. So quiet it could've belonged to a ghost. It haunted him.

It called to him.

"Stay with me," he said. Opening his eyes, he got up.